Pope’s message - A church in denial is doomed

COMING, as it does, just weeks after former priest and voracious paedophile and serial liar Tony Walsh was sentenced to 123 years in jail for the most appalling abuses, and as the publication of the report into how claims of child sexual abuse were dealt with in the Diocese of Cloyne is anticipated, the Pope’s Christmas message seems limp, wrong-headed and uninspiring.

Pope Benedict suggested that the Catholic Church has to find what is wrong with its message and with Christian life in general following the widespread sexual abuse of children by priests. He said the church must better train priests so that abusers are not ordained and must work out how to help victims of paedophile priests heal.

At this stage it is probably foolish to expect churchmen of Benedict’s generation to see their role in the brutish scandals as so many people, many of them disappointed and lapsed Catholics, see it. It is probably unwise to expect a church so committed to self-preservation, to guarding its power, pomp and haute couture culture of grandeur, to see itself as it is seen.